


all his whispered reassurances and the deaf ears upon which they fell

by lemonfizzies



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 06:06:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19824097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonfizzies/pseuds/lemonfizzies
Summary: tracking crowley and aziraphale (but mostly crowley) through six-thousand years of tiptoe tap-dancing around the vague, messy nature of their relationship while being viscerally reminded of why theyre not batting for the same team, this is a nonlinear collection of brikabrak scenes and interactions ft. several instances of a demon and an angel ignoring obvious hints with detours into some of the more brutal events they had to endure alone!NOTE: this fic will only be sporadically updated as the inspiration strikes my fancy. don't expect anything frequent or consistent!





	all his whispered reassurances and the deaf ears upon which they fell

**Author's Note:**

> the canon divergence tag is just there to ensure i dont accidentally step on timeline-related toes!  
> also more tags will be added as more situations arise & characters appear :)

First, Crowley heard it. The bright, aerated pop of a hollow bone. The wing is the most fragile appendage, of course, the easiest to snap. Every hallowed soldier, currently enlisted or fallen, knew this and there was always an unspoken rule to leave them alone in a fight. No matter what, don't fuck with someone's wings.  
He knew it would hit him soon, bowl him over like a tank. like a bomb.  
But the angel who trampled sacred boundaries is being pulled away, wrath in his eyes but only horror in his fellows'. Crowley stays on the floor, chest heaving. he has to move and he's going to feel it.  
the angels who ganged up on him vanish. he grits his teeth and pushes himself upright with his elbows, every colorful shade of 'coward' he can articulate tumbling past his lips in a garbled, unintelligible yell.  
he doesnt feel it.  
crowley shoves himself to his knees and another animalistic sound claws its way out of his throat. frustrated, he pounds the cement with one fist and it throbs, pulses, with dull sensation.  
he still doesn't feel it.  
his broken wing is limp, embedded with leaves and stamped-in asphalt grit. and he fumbles his glasses, drops them, as he shoves them away from his eyes. and then it hits. its worse than a tank. worse than a bomb.  
crowley can't feel his wing.  
the sound he makes is neither human nor hallowed but still broken, all the same. with a mighty shove, he is upright. his left wing shoots out as a counterbalance, flapping uselessly to offset the dead weight of his right, but he overcompensates and stumbles. the crack and crinkle of his tinted lenses alerts him to the insult now being added to injury. He staggers back and forth, dancing to avoid treading upon on his own inert feathers. plastic shards bury themselves in his rubber soles, get swept up in the wake of his dragging wing, and crunch into even tinier pieces on the asphalt.  
Bentley. He parked six blocks away, just to be safe. they can break him but they won't vandalize his car, not while he's still kicking.  
it could be worse. it could be *hurting*. at the moment, it's completely numb, and crowley will happily take his miracles as they arrive.  
Bentley.  
his wing isn't the only casualty of the fight. he can feel two ribs out of place, several lacerations, and the premonition of a black eye just beginning to swell. three on one really isn't fair but angels don't play fair. they don't dance and they don't play at all. Crowley had grown too used to the leniency of His Angel, had forgotten how ruthlessly efficient the lot could be in dispatching a perceived threat. "trespassing on hallowed ground" indeed. the fuck is hallowed ground, anyways, it's not holy or he would have felt it. A damn flimsy excuse to jump a demon, that's what it was.  
only two things can harm a solider of the almighty, even a fallen one (though a fallen one gains a special, EXTRA source of harm on top of the other two). first, obviously, is God herself. second is the holy weapons they weild. Angels must be very careful not to fumble their swords and bows and knives once issued, for there is no cure for a holy wound. but a soldieris more than the tools they brandish -- in the field of battle, drenched in blood and muck and wavering on your last legs against the forces of evil made manifest, there's more to them than the shattered blade at their feet. to a lesser known extent, an angel's very hands will do.  
and this is what Crowley realizes as he snaps his fingers weakly, again and again, on the way to the car.  
his wounds will not heal, even now, for demons are still angels, substantially speaking. they've been barred from the pearly gates but they haven't changed, haven't been made new creatures by it. once a solider, always a soldier, as they say.  
so there's only one thing in the cosmos that neither angel nor demon can miraculously recover from and it's the very thing anthony j. crowley is going to start feeling in about three minutes and twelve seconds, after the adrenaline and shock begin to ebb, slightly, away, leaving him stranded upon the desolate shores of blackout-inducing pain, with no one around who can fix it, and with no witnesses to his cries save the Almighty herself.  
But that's later.  
For three minutes and twelve seconds, Crowley will continue to drag himself, one foot after the other, towards his car. He will not make it. But that's not the point, is it? That's where he's walking. And, for the moment, that's where he believes he will arrive.  
Let him have that, please, for just three minutes more.

**Author's Note:**

> for a while, scenes will not be organized into any particular order but as i write more i'll be trying to organize them with proper titles to show which ones r related to each other, so expect chapter titles to change and for context of certain interactions 2 b shifted/expanded as we go along!


End file.
